


insomniacs are each other's best friends

by spacetownss



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, First Fic posted, college written by someone who hasn't been to college, everyone has a crush on my on my inky who's too focused on med school to care :), fluffs, i dont remember writing this but ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 23:12:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8867143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacetownss/pseuds/spacetownss
Summary: Cullen can't sleep, and Li'anna strongly believes in platonic cuddling.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I seriously can't remember writing this. Like, I found it and figured, 'Why not just post it? It's cute.' 
> 
> So here, take it and have a good time :) Hola at my ace/workaholic Inquisitor who everyone kinda has a crush on.

Never warm enough. His covers are never warm enough to rid the perpetual cold in his body that only Lyrium could truly get rid of.

So, he sweats like a nug in the Western Approach, but he feels like he’s running around naked in Emprise de Lion. Fun. He has a test tomorrow on the history of every single Exalted March to date, and another sleepless night might as well be spent studying rather than thinking about how much he can’t function like a normal human being. 

He gets up and tries not to wake Delrin, but simultaneously the scars on his back and the pounding pain in his temples act up again, forcing him to crash back into bed as his mattress protested with a loud creak. He quickly shot a look in Del’s direction, and sighed in relief to see he was still fast asleep. 

Studying was not an option anymore. So he lies dejectedly in bed and forces his eyes to close once again. A small part of him screams to keep awake, knowing what the night usually held for him. He hated it. He hated feeling like a coward and being too terrified to get a full night’s rest, even though it would save him from running on coffee for half of the next day. 

Suddenly a soft, hesitant knock brings him back to the real world, and he invites the visitor in, thankful for someone to keep him sane for the time being. 

Without the lights on, Cullen knows exactly who it is. Her foot steps were quiet and knew exactly how to find a path to his bed without disturbance in pitch black darkness. Li’anna. Sweet, unconditionally kind, and way out of his league Li’anna was sitting on the edge of his bed.

‘Skoot over a bit.’ And he does so. She settles her body next to him, her frame small enough to keep the university appointed single bed from getting too crowded.

‘What’s keeping you up?’ He asks. Why are you here? He also thinks to say, but does not. She has the whole dorm to adventure off to in times of insomnia, since she’s friends with the entire university. To say that he was confused that she came to him of all people was an understatement.

‘Nothing, really. Thinking in a dark room alone never leads to pleasant thoughts. Alone isn’t something I’m getting used to. Also, double degrees are a son of a bitch to deal with.’ She mutters, only loud enough to carry into his ears. She’s curling in on herself, and she throws an arm around his waist and nestles into his chest. He could feel his ears tinge red with the sudden show of affection. 

Li’anna is just that type of person. She’s constantly wrapping her arms around whoever she saw fit so casually it probably doesn’t mean anything to her at this point. 

Li’anna came from a large family. In the backroom of Blackwall’s bar, she’d tell the group stories of demented aunts and the antics of her many, many cousins over games of Wicked Grace. She’d share rooms with up to three of them at a time, and anyone could imagine being cut off from all of them would feel jarring as hell.

 

‘What’s keeping you up?’ She parrots his previous words back to him.

‘Nightmares,’ he says.

Now she’s analysing what he’s said, as he did when she told him. She at least, was generous enough to give him whole sentences, and she was stuck with just one word that could mean absolutely anything. It’s no secret Cullen was a veteran of some sort, with a pretty fucked up psyche to boot, if the meds he took and his assistance Mabari were anything to go by. 

She doesn’t say anything much after that, but she tightens her hold on his waist a little more and he snakes an arm around her shoulders and he feels truly warm for the first time in months. She tangles her legs in his and her hands make soothing circles in his back, just below the scars he’d like very much to forget completely. She smells of vanilla and apple spice, reminding him of the pies he used to make with Mia when they were children. This is good. So good.

‘Let’s try to sleep now, Cullen. Insomniacs are each other’s best friends.’ 

And he does. Better than he has in a long time.

When he wakes, Li’anna is already gone and he’s thankful, because being a bumbling idiot in the morning tends to be a running trademark of his, and that’s not even when you share a bed with the most radiant woman in all of Skyhold University platonically. (Really, it’s the most he can hope for. Li’anna does romantic things platonically by habit.) 

He picks up his phone in a clumsy haze, and see’s it booming with notifications from several different social media platforms he never even uses. Facebook, Instagram, and… When the hell did he get this yellow ghost app? The first thing he sees on his feed is- Makers breath.

A picture of Delrin with his rare but inexplicably shit eating grin greets him, but he’s out of focus and what’s behind him is the subject of the absolute shit storm in the comments. Li’anna is sprawled against him, drooling up the entirety of Lake Calenhad on his pillow. He turns to see an actual stain from which her mouth was on presumably a few moments before. Del’s caption spoke for itself clearly enough, the little winking emoji staring at him blankly, but with that little touch of hidden meaning emojis are notorious for.

The comments- Sweet Andraste, the comments are a complete mess. There’s a lot of scandalised middle aged elves spouting distaste, but there’s an overwhelming amount of younger ones around his age pretty much shutting down the former and hooting and hollering like Li’anna’s own personal fan club. 

His own friends are divided cleanly between states of ‘???’, ‘!!!’, and ‘?!?’. 

Well, college is rarely known for being boring, right?


End file.
